


Once in a Lullaby

by BreTheWriter



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Gun Violence, Minor Character Death, Starvation, Tarsus IV, The Children's Rebellion, mentions of abuse, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreTheWriter/pseuds/BreTheWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Kirk isn't sorry he came to Tarsus IV, even if he's hungry now, because the family that's taken him in is the most loving family he's ever known. But Governor Kodos has a solution to the famine...and it has consequences that Jimmy refuses to accept.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once in a Lullaby

            Jimmy knows that Sam wishes they’d never come to Tarsus II—or at least that _he_ hadn’t—but Jimmy can’t wish that, not right now. He’d rather be here, with things what they are and surrounded by people who love him, than back in that farmhouse on Earth hiding and feeling alone.

            His stomach is growling, but he ignores it. A plague hit the harvest and there’s only a little food left, so everybody is on short rations—that’s just the way of things. And he didn’t eat anything tonight. Last night Lissa and Sara cried themselves to sleep, they were so hungry, so today he split his dinner in half and sneaked it onto their plates when nobody was looking. He’s older than them, and Frank made him go to bed without supper plenty of times when the beatings stopped working. He can handle it.

            They’re sitting on the floor playing with the marbles Uncle AJ made them when someone knocks on the door. Uncle AJ opens the door and it’s the Starfleet man, the man with the yellow eyes, and Sara hides her face in Jimmy’s shoulder because she doesn’t like looking at them. She says they scare her. He doesn’t blame her.

            “What is it, Lieutenant Nylund?” Uncle AJ says quietly. He never raises his voice, or his hand in violence. It’s been a new experience for Jimmy, who never knew his father and has only ever known abuse.

            “Governor Kodos is asking certain citizens to assemble at the Town Center,” Lieutenant Nylund says. His voice is oily. “He believes he has found a way out of our…present difficulties.”

            “A solution to the food shortage? Did the Federation—”

            “The Federation cannot be counted on. We must solve this ourselves. And Governor Kodos has found the solution.”

            Uncle AJ nods. “When will this meeting be held?”

            “Governor Kodos has issued a list of those members of the colony who will attend,” Nylund says. “You will assemble tonight, and he will address you tomorrow afternoon.”

            “What possible logic could there be in that?”

            “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.” For the first time, Nylund talks like a regular human being, not like he’s reading off of a script.

            “I will,” Uncle AJ says. “I presume I’m on this list?”

            Nylund pulls out a PADD. “From this household: Barrett, Alan Jackson XII.  Barrett, Athena May Freeman.  Barrett, Allison Elizabeth. Barrett, Sara Michele. Barrett, Rebecca Lynn.” He lowers the PADD.

            Uncle AJ tenses, but says quietly, “I fail to see why my daughters are needed at this meeting.”

            “That will become clear.”

            “And why are my nephews not on your list?”

            “That will also become clear.”

            “When are we to report?”

            “Within the hour.”

            Nylund leaves, and the second he does, Sara bursts into tears. “Jimmy, don’t make me go,” she sobs, still buried in his shoulder.

            “I won’t,” he says determinedly. “You can stay here with Sam and me. Right, Uncle AJ?”

            For a second, he thinks Uncle AJ will say no, in the quiet way he has. If there’s one thing Jimmy Kirk has learned here, it’s that there are rules for a reason, and Uncle AJ is big on the rules. But something in Uncle AJ’s face scares Jimmy, and he tightens his arm around Sara.

            “Yes, Sara, you may stay here,” he says at last. “Lissa, you may stay, too.”

            “I want to go, Daddy,” Lissa says. At six and a half, she’s tougher than Sara is, more headstrong, and she’s probably eaten up with curiosity. Jimmy is, too, but he won’t leave Sara, not when she needs him.

            “All right,” Uncle AJ agrees. “Sam, will you watch Jimmy and Sara?”

            “Of course I will, Uncle AJ,” Sam says from where he’s washing the dishes.

            Uncle AJ nods. Jimmy notices that he looks worried, though, as he goes into the bedroom to talk to Aunt Theenie, who went back to feed Reba. He tries to interest Sara in the game again, but she’s too scared, too upset to do anything but hide her face in his shoulder.

            Uncle AJ comes out with his arm around Aunt Theenie, cradling Reba. The first time Jimmy saw her, he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the galaxy, with her warm, sparkling brown eyes and her skin the color of the strong, bitter coffee his mother drinks and her tight, curly black hair. He still thinks she’s beautiful, even though she looks thin and drawn and her cheeks are hollow. He knows it’s because she’s worried about Reba. She had the baby right after Jimmy and his brother got to Tarsus, and right away she was a fat and cheerful baby, with creamy café-au-lait skin and a full head of black curls, not tight like Aunt Theenie’s but soft and loose, about as big around as Jimmy’s finger. She’s still nursing, so she’s getting better nutrients than everyone else is right now, but Jimmy knows Aunt Theenie thinks if the food shortage doesn’t end soon then she won’t be able to produce enough milk for her and Reba will start to starve, too.

            “We’ll be back tomorrow,” Uncle AJ promises. “Sam, you’ll have to go for our rations in the morning. Jimmy, Sara, you two stay inside until we get back, you hear me?”

            Jimmy nods. He’s burning up with curiosity, but he knows not to argue when Uncle AJ uses that tone of voice. Besides, Sara is obviously terrified of leaving their little house. Her fourth birthday was only two days ago, Aunt Theenie scrimped and saved and scraped up enough to bake her a little cake that she generously shared with everybody, and she’s adored Jimmy from the moment he met her. He loves her, too, he loves all three of his cousins and his aunt and uncle who welcomed him so readily into their home and their family, he’ll do anything for them. Even stay inside when he wants to see, he wants to _know._

            So he pulls Sara onto his lap and lets her cuddle against his chest as Uncle AJ and Aunt Theenie and Lissa and Reba walk out the door, and now it’s just the three of them, Sam and Jimmy and Sara, George Samuel and James Tiberius and Sara Michele, two Kirks and a Barrett, except they’re all Barretts in a way, Sam and Jimmy’s mother is Uncle AJ’s twin sister. Sara looks just like Uncle AJ except her eyes aren’t pale blue like his and Sam’s, they’re much brighter, what Aunt Theenie calls electric blue, just like Jimmy’s are. Sam goes to the window and watches them walk up the streets, but Jimmy doesn’t get up and neither does Sara, they just stay where they are in the remains of their game, holding onto one another.

            Sam eventually comes back over, and usually he’d yell at Jimmy to pick up after himself, _you’re almost ten years old, you can clean up after yourself,_ but he doesn’t, he silently picks up the marbles and puts them back in the sack and puts it away in the cupboard, and then he sits down on the floor across from Jimmy and Sara, and for a long time they don’t say anything. It’s as if they all know that something bad is happening, but they don’t know what. Or at least, Jimmy and Sara don’t know what. Something in Sam’s eyes tell Jimmy that he _does_ know, but he won’t tell them.

            Finally, when it’s so dark they can’t see each other, Sam gets up and lights the lantern. “Come on,” he says quietly. “Bedtime.”

            “Don’t go ‘way,” Sara whimpers, clinging tightly to Jimmy’s chest.

            “I won’t leave you,” Jimmy promises, and he glares defiantly up at Sam, daring him to argue.

            Sam doesn’t argue. “You guys can sleep in my bed with me tonight. We’ll be safe there.” He latches the front door and takes Jimmy and Sara into the second-biggest bedroom. It had been Lissa’s bedroom at first, but when Uncle AJ and Aunt Theenie agreed to let Jimmy and Sam come live with them, they put a second bed in Sara’s room and a second bed in Lissa’s room, and now Sara and Lissa share a room and Jimmy and Sam share a room and Reba sleeps in a crib in Uncle AJ and Aunt Theenie’s room, and the whole house is crowded but it’s cozy.

            One bed is messy, the other is neat, and surprisingly it’s not Jimmy’s bed but Sam’s that’s all rumpled, because Jimmy is meticulous about making his bed, he always has been, Uncle AJ rumpled his hair once and said you could bounce a quarter off of his sheets, then had to explain to his insatiable nephew what a _quarter_ was, but Sam, who’s usually neat as a pin, doesn’t bother, doesn’t see the point if he’s just going to mess it up that night and nobody ever comes back to see it. Jimmy can’t explain why it bothers him to have a messy bed, it just does, so every morning he makes his bed with military neatness.

            Sam sets the lantern on the little table wedged between the beds and pushes back the crumpled covers. Jimmy climbs in and scoots all the way over to the edge, and Sara crawls practically on top of him, and Sam gets on the other side and tucks them in and wraps his arm around both Jimmy and Sara and puts out the lantern.

            “Want me to tell you a story?” he asks quietly.

            Jimmy looks up, and in that moment, he understands. Sam hasn’t told Jimmy any stories since long before he ran away, only to come back because he found out Jimmy had driven their dad’s car into a canyon and gotten hurt. If he’s offering to tell them a story now, it’s because something bad is about to happen, and he knows what it is. Jimmy doesn’t know, and he’s afraid to ask, and he doesn’t want to say yes because that would be admitting that they were in danger. But he feels Sara nod into his shoulder, so he says, “Please, Sam?”

            Sam pulls them close and begins. “Once upon a time in a land far away, there lived a king and queen who had three daughters. The oldest princess would be queen someday, and already the people knew she would be a just and fair ruler. The youngest princess was beloved of all the people because she loved them just as they were, and she was betrothed to a mighty prince in another land. But the middle princess was most special. She had lips as red as roses and eyes as blue as the sky and hair as golden as sunshine, and she had magic, the magic that made all things grow.”

            Sara, Jimmy realizes. Sam is talking about Sara. He continues, “There was a terrible monster that lived in the Grumbly Mountains, where nothing grew and the sun never shone, and he saw the princess and said, ‘I will take her away from the kingdom, and she will bring light and growing things to me, and she will be mine for ever.’ So one night, while the princess was sleeping, he sneaked into the castle and took her from her bed. And the sun disappeared, and the rain began, and everything began to die, because the monster had taken the princess and her magic.

            “Many knights, the best and bravest in the land, swore to go out and find the princess and bring the magic back to the kingdom. The king and queen gave them their blessing, and the knights rode far and wide, but none of them succeeded.  Nothing they tried worked, and soon there were fewer and fewer knights left, and none who were brave enough to try. And still it rained, and nothing would grow, and the people began to starve.

            “Finally, the king went to see his sister, who was a Wise Woman living in the Gnarly Woods, on the other side of the kingdom from the Grumbly Mountains. And he asked, ‘Sister, how can this monster be defeated? How will my knights ever be able to destroy him, so that the sun may shine and the crops may grow again?’ And the Wise Woman shook her head, because she knew that the king was asking the wrong questions. He asked her again, ‘How will this monster be defeated? Who will defeat him? Who will save my people, and return our magic, and make the sun shine again?’

            “And the Wise Woman replied, ‘The one who defeats the monster will be the one who deserves the sun.’

            “This puzzled the king. He called together all of his counselors, and he said to them, ‘The Wise Woman of the Gnarly Woods, my sister, has said that the one who defeats the monster will be the one who deserves the sun. What can she mean?’ And his counselors had no idea. They told him only that the knights must keep trying, and surely one of them would succeed.

            “The next day, a new knight came to the palace to seek the king and queen’s blessing on his attempt to save the kingdom and restore the magic. With him came another, no more than a boy. The king did not notice him, but the queen did, and said, ‘And who is this who comes with you?’

            “‘Majesties,’ the knight replied, ‘he is my squire, and he is also my brother. I did not wish to bring him before you, but he told me that he would not stay behind, and if I did not bring him he would only follow. He will not go with me to the mountains, but remain behind until I return. I beg your indulgence.’”

            “What’s ‘dulgence?” Sara murmurs.

            “Uh—” Sam stutters. “It means the knight asked them to just let it go.”

            “Oh.”

            “Go on,” Jimmy prompts.

            “The king ignored the boy, giving his blessing to the knight, but the queen could not take her eyes off of him. His face was smeared with dirt, his head covered in a plain brown hat, but when his brother and the king turned away, he raised his eyes for a moment, and they, too, were blue—as blue as the missing princess’s.

            “The king was very pleased with this new knight. He called together his counselors and told them that the knight was the bravest in the land, the strongest and most valiant, the son of a knight who had been famous and fought beside the king but who was now dead, and everyone said that this knight would surely be the one to defeat the monster and return with the magic. But the queen thought of the squire, and she wondered.

            “The two brothers set out for the Grumbly Mountains. Now, the monster had taken the princess hoping that her magic would make things grow for him, but it did not; the mountains were as bare as ever, and the monster was most impatient with the princess, who sat and wept with fear and loneliness. But he would not kill her, because he still hoped to get her to use her magic.

            “Like all the others who had tried, the knight decided that he would ride up to the mouth of the cave, and challenge the monster, and when it came out, he would stab it in the heart with his sword. But when he tried this, the monster rose against him, and defended itself well, and the knight fell, badly wounded. His horse bore him back to the palace, and all moaned with fear, for they knew that no one else was so brave or strong, and no one now could defeat the monster.

            “The knight’s brother helped him to the palace, to a room where he could recover, and then he tended to the horse, as a good squire should do. Once he was assured that his brother would recover, he asked for an audience with the king and queen.

            “The king granted him permission, thinking that he wished to claim some sort of payment for his brother, and prepared to grant it. But when the boy was brought before them, he knelt and said simply, ‘I am going to the mountains. I seek your blessing.’

            “The king was astonished. ‘But my boy,’ he said, ‘you are not even a full knight yet. Your brother has tried and fallen. What hope do you have of succeeding?’

            “‘I must go,’ the boy said. ‘I seek your blessing, but if I cannot have it, I will still go.’

            “The king was about to argue, but the queen spoke first. ‘You shall have mine, if nothing else.’

            “Then the king knew there was no help for it, and he, too, gave his blessing. He ordered that the boy be fit with armor and arms, and given a saddle for his horse that fit better than the one designed for his brother. The boy thanked him politely, but once he had left the kingdom, he stopped and took these things off, put them under a rock, and rode away on the horse. He tethered the horse some distance from the mountains, and walked up.

            “Now the boy had chosen the time of day when the monster was out hunting, and he simply walked into the cave and found the princess, sitting and weeping. He knelt before her. ‘Princess,’ he said, ‘I have come to take you home.’

            “‘I cannot leave,’ the princess said. ‘The monster will not let me.’

            “‘The monster will not stop us. I will not let him. Come with me.’

            “‘But if he returns?’

            “‘Then I will tell him the same as I tell you, that he cannot stop us from leaving.’

            “But the princess was still fearful. ‘What if he does?’

            “The boy looked at her, and smiled. His smile was very like hers. ‘Then I will stay, too. Either way, I will never leave you.’”

            Sara snuggles deeper into Jimmy, who stares at his brother’s dark shape with wide eyes. Sam continues. “The princess believed him. She took his hand, and together they walked out of the cave. They had almost reached the horse when the monster returned. He roared and tried to stop them, as the princess had feared, but the boy said simply, ‘We are going. You cannot stop us.’

            “‘The magic will be mine!’ the monster roared.

            “But the boy shook his head. ‘It is not yours to take. It is hers to give away, as she chooses.’

            “The monster growled, its yellow eyes flashing. ‘So you take the magic back for your precious kingdom!’

            “Again the boy shook his head. ‘I am not taking the magic back to the kingdom. I am taking the princess home. And I say again, you cannot stop us.’

            “The monster growled and gibbered and tried to frighten them, but the boy ignored it. He led the princess to his horse, and sat her on it, and they rode away.

            “The monster grew angry, and followed them, roaring and promising to do terrible things to them both, if they did not give him the princess’s magic to make things grow for him. The princess grew frightened, and began to cry.

            “‘I will go back to him,’ she sobbed. ‘I will return, and he will let you go, and he will not hurt either of us.’

            “But the boy only smiled. ‘I promised you that I would not leave you,’ he said, ‘and I will not. We will get back safely.’

            “They rode hard, until they were within sight of the kingdom. But then the horse stumbled and fell. The boy leaped clear, pulling the princess with him, but the horse broke its neck and died where it fell. The princess cried out that they were surely dead, no help would reach them and they would never make it to the kingdom in time, unless he left her to the monster. But the boy said again, ‘I will not leave you. Stay behind me.’

            “He stooped to the path and picked up a rock, and he waited. When the monster broke out of the mountains, the boy threw as hard as he could. The rock struck the monster between the eyes and embedded itself in its brain, and the terrible monster fell to the ground, dead.

            “The boy turned back to the princess with a smile, and took her hand, and led her back to the kingdom.

            “The knight by this time was well enough to sit up, and he was in the throne room talking to the king and queen when his brother came in, leading the princess. The king was astonished. ‘You have done it!’ he cried. ‘You have brought the magic back to our kingdom!’ And from the people there came a great cheer. But the queen noticed that the boy was not smiling now. He seemed quite upset. The king continued, ‘You shall have a reward for saving the people. What would you like?’

            “The boy straightened up. ‘Your Majesty, I will accept no reward from you, for you are not the man I thought you to be. You are no better than the monster.’

            “The people gasped, and the knight frowned. ‘Your Majesty, I beg of you to forgive my brother. He is young, and in his youth, utters folly,’ he exclaimed.

            “‘I speak the truth,’ the boy insisted. ‘You do not understand—none of you understand!’

            “The room was silent, expecting the king to order the foolish boy beheaded, but the queen came forward first. She stopped directly in front of the boy and spoke in a soft voice that nonetheless filled the room. ‘The first time I saw you, I felt that you were different than the others. I felt that you knew something the others did not. I still feel this. Please tell us. How did you succeed where others failed?’

            “The boy looked up at her, his eyes trusting. ‘Many times, you and your family rode past our estates,’ he said simply. ‘I would be helping in the fields or caring for the horses, and when I looked up to watch you pass, none of you would see. Except for one—for the middle princess. She would see me and offer me a smile, perhaps a wave. And on the way back, she would do the same.’ He looked at the princess again, then back at the queen. ‘I did not go to rescue the magic. I went to rescue the princess. And I have brought the princess back.’

            “And then the king understood his sister’s words. The boy had defeated the monster because he deserved the sun. The sun was not the one in the sky, the one brought by the princess’s magic. It was the princess herself. This boy deserved her smile, her friendship, and her love. He had saved her because of herself, not because of what she could do, and that made him the worthiest of all.

            “So the king apologized, to the boy and to his daughter. The boy became the greatest, the wisest, and the kindest of the knights, and when they were grown, he married the middle princess, and she was no longer royal, but she was very happy, and they stayed that way to the end of their days.”

            Sam kisses Sara’s forehead, then tousles Jimmy’s hair and holds them both even closer. Jimmy curls into his cousin and falls asleep before he can figure out what the story is supposed to mean.

* * *

            Sara is quiet the next day, almost listless, and attaches herself to Jimmy’s waist, she won’t let go of him. He sits on the floor of the living room and holds her while Sam goes to get their daily food rations. They sit in silence for a while.

            Finally, Sara says quietly, “Will you save me from the monster, Jimmy?”

            “Of course I will,” Jimmy says stoutly. “I won’t ever leave you.”

            “Promise?”

            “Cross my heart and hope to die.” Jimmy holds Sara tighter and rocks back and forth. He starts singing, one of her favorite songs, almost a lullaby, and she relaxes into him.

            Sam comes in, looking worried, and he only has two bags instead of five. “The guards wouldn’t give me all our rations,” he says quietly. “They said that I could only get rations for you and me, Jimmy. And they wouldn’t tell me why.”

            Sara whimpers. Jimmy hugs her. “Give Sara my breakfast,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

            Sam bites his lip, then holds out his hand. “Come on,” he says shortly.

            “Where are we going?” Jimmy asks, standing up, still holding Sara.

            “Tony says—well, never mind. Trust me, Jimmy. We’re going somewhere safe.” Sam smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “We’re going to the cave in the Grumbly Mountains.”

            “Daddy said don’t leave,” Sara mumbles.

            “I know, but—trust me, Sara. I’ll take the blame. We’ve got to go. It’s not safe here anymore.”

            Jimmy tenses. “How do you know?”

            “Stop asking questions!” Sam snaps. “Just trust me! Come on, we’ve got to hurry. Not the front, the back.”

            They start for the back door when suddenly the front door bursts open and armed guards charge into the house. Sara and Jimmy cling to one another and Sam tries to push them to the door, but two of the guards grab him and pull him back, and one of them growls, “Stop fighting, she’s got to go with her family.”

            Jimmy realizes they’re trying to take Sara. “You can’t have her!” he yells. “She’s staying with us! _We’re_ her family!”

            “Shut up, kid,” snarls a guard, grabbing Jimmy from behind, and another grabs Sara’s waist.

            They both scream, trying to hold on, but the guards are stronger, and one of them tears Sara from his arms. Jimmy screams louder, flailing desperately, trying to get away, but it’s no use, they’re taking Sara away, she’s screaming so loudly that everyone must hear it. Something hits Jimmy upside the head and he blacks out.

            He comes around not that much later to see Sam kneeling over him, white as a sheet. “Jimmy, are you okay?”

            “They took Sara!” Jimmy screams. “They took her away! We have to—”

            “We have to _go,_ Jimmy,” Sam urges. “Come on. We have to meet up with the others, and then I _promise_ we’ll go get Sara.”

            “What others?” Jimmy demands. “What’s going on?”

            And then Sam tells him. “Governor Kodos says there isn’t enough food for everyone to survive until the Federation can get here and save us—only half of us. He’s decided to kill half of the people in the colony this afternoon, so that everyone else will live.”

            “ _What?_ ” Jimmy leaps to his feet. “We’ve gotta save them!”

            “We _will,_ Jimmy, but we have to meet up with the others first! Most of the adults are in that meeting. Come _on._ ”

            At last, Jimmy gives in to the pulling, he lets Sam pull him out the back door, and they run down the streets. It’s all confusion, people who didn’t go last night being herded by the guards, people trying to escape, children crying for their mothers, men yelling for their families, absolute chaos.

            They pass under a house and Jimmy stops, looking up at the top floor, where a pair of green eyes peers at him from over the edge. “Jimmy!” Sam shouts.

            Jimmy waves him on, shimmying up the trellis on the side of the building. There on the roof is a little boy, not much older than Sara, with sandy red hair and big green eyes and freckles.

            “My name’s Jimmy,” he says. “What’s yours?”

            “Kevin Patrick Riley,” the boy replies.

            Jimmy wonders if he says it like that because he heard the men read his name off the list last night, or if that’s just how he was taught to say his name. “Well, Kevin, we gotta get out of here,” he says.

            Kevin shakes his head. “Mommy said to stay here. She said it’s safe.”

            “Not anymore,” Jimmy says, glancing to where his brother is frantically beckoning. He holds out his hand. “Here, take my hand. We’ll run together.”

            “I’m tired, Jimmy,” Kevin admits. It’s really early, after all—the rations are given out before sunrise so people can eat and then get to work.

            “Okay. Let me carry you,” Jimmy proposes. He holds out his arms, and the little boy hesitantly walks into them. Jimmy hoists him up—he’s a little heavier than Sara, but not much. “C’mon. I gotcha, Kevin,” he reassures the boy.

            He can’t climb down the building, not while holding the kid, but he’s confident, he jumps off the side of the building and bends his knees when he lands, taking the brunt of the shock. He stumbles, recovers, and runs after Sam.

            Kevin’s tiny arms clasp around his neck. He starts crying. Jimmy can’t spare the breath to murmur soothingly to him. Instead, he just holds him tighter and runs a little faster.

            They make it to a cave, Jimmy doesn’t know how. He puts Kevin down and looks around, surprised that there’s a light, and he counts. There are seventy-nine other people in the room, and they’re all children. He counts again, and then he looks up at Sam.

            “There are eight thousand and two people in this colony, counting us,” he says firmly. “That means there are four thousand and one people _not_ at that meeting. Which means there are three thousand nine hundred and twenty people back in the village. We’ve gotta save them!”

            “Jimmy, listen to me, okay?” Sam says urgently. “Just _listen,_ for once in your life. The people in the village, they’re either grown-ups or they’re kids whose parents are still with them. They’re _safe._ Us, we’re the ones who don’t have anyone else. We’ve got no one but ourselves to protect us. And we’ve got nothing to lose in saving our families. You got that? Don’t rush off saving people who don’t need to be saved. There are plenty who _do._ ”

            Jimmy jerks back like he’s been slapped. Everyone is in danger, he realizes that even if Sam doesn’t. It never occurred to him that there were people who didn’t deserve to be saved. They need to save everybody. And, looking around, he realizes that this cave isn’t the way to do it. There must be another way.

            He watches Kevin for a minute, thinks of Sara, of Lissa and Reba, thinks of the hard-faced soldiers who tore his cousin from his arms and the cat-eyed monster who read their names like a death toll and the mysterious figure of a man he’s never seen, Governor Kodos, the man who ordered all of this. And he begins to think his way out.

            Tony comes in, Sam’s best friend, and she herds in another group of children, a big one. Someone is pooling all their rations, feeding the kids, the little ones first and then the older ones. Jimmy ignores them, ignores the pangs in his belly, and crosses over to where Sam and Tony are talking.

            “It’s not much of a choice,” Sam is saying, hopelessly. “We can’t fit four thousand people in this cave. And he’s right, there aren’t enough rations to feed everyone properly. We’re all going to start starving.”

            “So what?” Tony’s eyes flash. “You think we should just let them die?”

            “I didn’t say that,” Sam protests. “It’s just…it’s a no-win scenario.”

            “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios,” Tony says firmly. “Listen, Sam. I know we’re just kids, but there are a lot of us. Have you counted how many kids are here?”

            “Uh—”

            Jimmy has just counted the group of kids that came in with Tony and swiftly added them to the previous total. “Ninety-six,” he supplies.

            Sam glares at him. “Jimmy, go get breakfast.”

            “No.” Jimmy steps closer, folding his arms defiantly over his chest, and turns to Tony. “There are ninety-six kids, but more than half of them are little, less than five. I think there are forty-three, counting us, who are school-aged.”

            “Right,” Tony says, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s…golly, that’s a hundred people per kid, that’s a lot. Well…we can do it. We’ll sneak the little ones out first, there are a bunch of kids that were taken, I don’t know why. Once the adults see what we’re doing, they’ll follow, maybe they’ll even help.”

            “No,” Jimmy says suddenly.

            Tony and Sam both stare at him. Sam opens his mouth to yell, but Tony beats him to the punch. “What do you mean, no? Why not?”

            Jimmy has been thinking. “We won’t be able to save them all by taking them out of the hall. The guards will just come after us and start killing them. We have to take out the guards.”

            “How do you propose we do that?” Sam says waspishly. “You couldn’t even fight off one guard.”

            Jimmy clenches his hands into fists. He’d hit Sam if he thought it would do any good. “I did my best! And I didn’t have any warning. We’ll sneak up on them. Look—” He stoops and picks up a rock, just the size of his fist. “I’ve got good aim. I can hit someone with a rock, and I can hit them hard. We all can. We’ll use rocks to subdue some of them, then we can get their weapons away from them and take down the rest. It’s the only way we can save _everybody._ ”

            Sam stares at the rock in Jimmy’s hand, his face bloodless. But Tony nods. “It’s a good plan, Jimmy. You’re right. Okay, then. The three of us will be the leaders. We’ll get everyone together and go in there—”

            “Wait,” Sam interrupts, shaking his head and looking up at her. “We can’t just charge in. We need to scout it out first. Send a small party to see what’s going on.”

            Tony hesitates. “You’re right, too,” she admits. “See, where would we be without the Kirks to lead us?” She smiles at Jimmy and winks. “Okay. You two, me—” she turns to look at the older children, then points to a pair of children at random—“you and you, come on. Everyone else, stay here, get something to eat, get ready. We’ll be back soon with a better idea of what we’re facing.”

            “Put that rock down,” Sam says sharply to Jimmy. “You won’t need that.”

            Jimmy lets the rock fall from his hand, wondering what it is that has Sam so afraid. But he does let the rock go. The other two children join them, and they dart from rock to rock and dead tree to dead tree, zigzagging their way across the desolation to the chamber where the meeting is taking place.

            It’s an open space, almost an arena. Jimmy cautiously lifts his head over the edge, just his eyes, so he can see but hopefully not be seen. Thousands of people are standing about. The few children within are crying, not understanding. He hears a familiar wail, looks almost directly down, and sees Aunt Theenie trying to comfort baby Reba. Lissa clings to Uncle AJ’s leg. Sara kneels on the ground, looking around desperately, but there are guards everywhere, she could never run away.

            Jimmy starts to get to his feet, but Sam grabs his shoulder, pulling him down. “Don’t be an idiot!” he hisses. “You can’t just charge in there like that!”

            “But—”

            “We’re here to _watch_ and _plan._ We’ll save them. We’ve got until this afternoon. _Honestly,_ Jimmy, don’t you _ever_ listen?”

            Jimmy subsides. Tony leans over. “Jimmy, you’re the fastest counter,” she murmurs without parting her lips. “How many guards are there?”

            It takes Jimmy no more than a second to count. “Twenty-six.”

            “Hmm. Two of us to a guard, just about. Those odds ought to be—”

            But a noise cuts her off, and suddenly a figure appears at the other end of the arena, a figure in a black robe. It spreads its arms, and everyone falls silent. And then the robe falls back.

            Jimmy looks, for the first time, on the face of Governor Kodos.

            “Citizens!” he calls in a voice that echoes around the arena. “Citizens, you have been called here for a great honor. It is your privilege to save your fellow colonists, your children and your friends! The relief ship from the Federation is four weeks away. It will arrive too late to save everyone. We have enough food to sustain the colony for _two_ weeks—or to sustain _half_ the colony for _four_ weeks.”

            He looks around the assembly. “If the colony is to survive, and to _sustain,_ we _must_ succor those who are pure, who are superior. Those who can bring about another generation of superiority and purity. My loyal followers and I, we have examined our records and our data, and we have determined that those of you who are assembled here are—ah—inferior. Therefore, we have determined that—for the good of the colony—” He smiles and raises his hand, and every single guard comes to attention. “You must be sacrificed.”

            He drops his hand.

            And then the shooting begins.

            The two children whose names Jimmy does not know duck down, horrified, and Sam covers his face, but Jimmy can’t move, can’t blink, can’t do anything but watch in stupefied shock as the guards fire, again and again and again. He sees Uncle AJ attempt to shelter Lissa, sees Aunt Theenie curl around Reba, but then they fall, they lie on the ground bleeding and staring, and Sara tries to run, like so many of them, she screams in fear like the others, and Jimmy starts to stand, determined to save her if nothing else. She looks up, her eyes lock on his, she opens her mouth—

            And then she screams in pain, and falls to the ground bleeding, the weapon’s charge tearing through her like a hot knife through butter. These are not phasers, Jimmy thinks numbly, phasers would not leave marks, phasers would kill them instantly and mercifully…but this is not about mercy, this is about suffering, this is about blood…

            The firing stops, the silence is almost deafening, and Kodos looks around. He says only, “Come,” and then walks away, and the guards follow him. One treads contemptuously on a body—Aunt Theenie.

            And then all is empty, all is still.

            “Come on,” Tony says instantly, getting to her feet.

            Jimmy is up immediately, but the others don’t move. Sam is hunched on the ground, trying not to be sick, and the other two are frozen.

            “Fine,” Tony snaps. “You three stay here, on guard. Jimmy, come on.”

            “Where are you going?” Sam asks, weakly.

            “There might be someone alive down there.”

            Jimmy follows her. He makes straight for Sara. Even though he knows it’s a long shot, he has to see, has to find out…

            He touches her shoulder, and God be praised, she _moves,_ she whimpers and curls into herself, and Jimmy could cry he’s so happy. “Sara,” he whispers. “Sara, it’s me, I came back for you…hold on, we’ll fix it.” He takes her into his arms.

            Sara forces her eyes open, looks up at him, and whimpers. Jimmy tries to staunch the terrible wound. “It’s gonna be okay, Sara,” he says. “I won’t leave you. I promise.”

            Sara raises one feebly trembling hand and touches his cheek. She manages a weak smile. “You…deserve…the sun,” she whispers.

            Her head lolls backwards. Her arm slides limply away from his face. She gives one final sigh. And she is gone.

            “Sara?” he whispers. “Sara?”

            But she is beyond hearing now.

            He knows he should be looking for other survivors, but he can’t help himself, he just holds his little cousin’s body and sobs. It’s his first real brush with death, he was only a few minutes old when his father died, Grandpa Barrett died before he was born and Grandfather Tiberius slept away at the end and anyway he never really saw the body, but this is _real,_ he watched Sara _butchered_ and held her while she took her final breath. He loved her, he _still_ loves her, and he promised her it would be okay and he couldn’t save her.

            “Jimmy.”

            Jimmy forces himself to look up. His eyes are still blurred with tears, but he can vaguely make out Tony standing over him. He tries to speak, but he can’t.

            “Jimmy, we’ve got to go,” Tony says urgently. “They’re coming back, they’re going to—” She stops, swallows. “I—there’s only one. Her mother must have protected her. But we have to go or we’ll all three die, and then we’ll never get vengeance for them. Come on.”

            Jimmy wipes his eyes. Regretfully, he lowers Sara’s body to the ground, then he scrambles up the side of the arena after Tony. He doesn’t look back.

            They reach the top and drop next to the other three. Sam takes one look at Jimmy and turns white. “Jimmy—oh, God—you’re covered in blood—”

            “Sara’s dead,” Jimmy says, and somehow he says it without his voice shaking. “She died while I was holding her.”

            “Oh, God, Jimmy,” Sam chokes, and he wraps Jimmy tight in his arms.

            “Come on,” Tony says, her voice tight. “We need to get back to the others. This little one needs help.”

            Jimmy looks up and sees the baby in Tony’s arm, sees her about to start crying, and he holds out his arms. “I’ll take her.”

            Tony hands the baby over, and Jimmy cradles her, cradles little Reba, who’s alive all right but covered in blood, and Jimmy can’t tell if it’s hers or Aunt Theenie’s but he knows they have to get out of there, fast.

            As they run back for the caves, he hears a clicking sound, and then a _whoosh_ and a _fwoom_ and feels the heat hit the back of his neck. He doesn’t have to turn around to know that they’ve dropped a firebomb in the arena, they’re burning the bodies, there will be no burial for the slain, only cremation and a mass grave. He grits his teeth and he clutches Reba tighter and he runs faster.

            And he doesn’t cry.

* * *

            There are exactly forty of them who, armed with rocks, storm the compound two hours later. Forty of them, all children between the ages of six and sixteen, angry and scared and grieving. Some of them are crying.

            Jimmy isn’t. God knows he has reason to. The blood was Reba’s, and her little ribs were broken, probably when the guard stepped on Aunt Theenie’s body, and she died while they were still trying to help save her. He’s lost everyone but Sam. But he isn’t crying. He can’t cry. He has to avenge them. He has to save everybody else.

            But the rebellion, such as it is, isn’t very well planned. They _are_ only children, after all, they don’t know what they’re doing. The only sensible part of it is that they’ve left three of the older ones to watch the littlest kids. The rest of the plan is too hasty, too emotional, and relies too heavily on luck. Which they don’t have.

            In the first place, they find out that Jimmy’s count wasn’t quite accurate. He counted every guard he could see in the arena, but there are three times that many soldiers altogether. They go in preparing to face two-to-one odds in their favor, and find it to be the opposite. And the soldiers are much better armed than the children are. They have rocks, while the soldiers have the death-dealing weapons, far less clean and bloodless than the standard-issue phasers but no less deadly.

            Jimmy won’t let Sam protect him. He’s going to find the soldier who stepped on Aunt Theenie, he’s going to find the soldier who shot Sara, he’s going to find the soldiers who tore them apart, and he’s going to _make them pay._ He recognizes the one that took Sara away from him and throws the stone in his hand as hard as he can and hits him in the throat, and the man gurgles and clutches his neck and falls down and doesn’t get up again. Jimmy scrambles towards the man’s body, intent on getting his weapon. If he can only get the weapon, he can turn the tides, he can take down _more_ of the soldiers and the children will be victorious.

            But before he can get there, someone stomps on his back, flattening him, and he feels something cold press at the back of his head, and he thinks, _This is it. I’m going to die._ Strangely, he doesn’t care. If he dies, he’ll see Sara and Lissa and Reba again, he’ll be with Uncle AJ and Aunt Theenie, he’ll get to hear Grandfather Tiberius’s stories one more time, he’ll get to meet Grandpa Barrett…and his _father,_ he’ll get to meet the father Sam was lucky enough to know and he wasn’t.

            He doesn’t close his eyes. He manages to roll over and look defiantly up at the soldier. He’s not going to hide from death. He’s going to watch it come, and he _doesn’t care._

            From within the compound, however, he hears a familiar, echoing voice. “ENOUGH. Bring them to me.”

            The soldier hauls Jimmy to his feet. He looks around and feels the bile rise in his throat. Only ten of the other children are on their feet, all of them battered and bloody. Some of the soldiers—a lot more than Jimmy would have expected—are bleeding and groaning and limping away to have their injuries taken care of, and the one Jimmy knocked down isn’t moving at all. But he’s the only one.

            Thirty of the kids are dead.

            “Move,” the soldier snarls, shoving Jimmy forward. He stumbles, but manages to keep his feet.

            The soldiers herd them into a room. Some stay to guard them while the others—including, Jimmy notes, the Starfleet man, Lieutenant Nylund—go into another room. Tony and Sam are both there, which makes Jimmy feel a little better in a detached way, talking quietly to the kids around them, several of whom are crying. Jimmy makes his way over to them.

            “I got one,” he says quietly. “The one that took Sara away. I got him good.”

            Sam glances at Tony, then at the guards, then bends over and whispers urgently in Jimmy’s ear. “Jimmy, whatever you do, don’t say anything. Promise me you won’t say anything, no matter what he says.”

            Jimmy wants to argue, he’s born to argue, but something in Sam’s eyes makes him change his mind. “I promise, Sam,” he says instead.

            Sam relaxes. He reaches over to give Jimmy a hug—which he wasn’t expecting—but then the guards come back and one soldier takes each child and marches them into the other room.

            Kodos is there, the man Jimmy saw earlier that day ordering everyone to death, sitting on a chair surrounded by his guards and watching. His eyes are black, black as night, but there’s a fire in them, a spark of some kind, and Jimmy instantly knows that he’s crazy. Well, you’d have to be crazy _anyway_ to order four thousand people to die because they were “inferior,” but Kodos is _really_ crazy.

            “Ah, my poor children,” he says sadly, and he really does look sorry for them. “You do not know how badly I regret the deaths of your comrades.”

            Jimmy wants to pull away from the hands of the soldier, wants to demand to know how this man can regret the deaths of their friends when he ordered their families put to death, but he remembers his promise to Sam and bites his tongue. Kodos scans the group, then signals for the soldiers to release them. They do, although they keep their weapons trained on them.

            “I will make a bargain,” Kodos says. “You are valiant fighters. You have proven that I was right to preserve you, for you are truly superior. If your leaders surrender, I will free the others. As for the leaders, I will be merciful, you have my word.”

            Jimmy doesn’t know what to do. Tony and Sam step forward immediately, heads held high, not looking back. “We are the leaders,” Sam says steadily.

            Kodos tilts his head. “You two?” he repeats.

            “Yes,” Tony says, firmly. “We did it, the two of us. We led them.”

            “ _Only_ you two?” Kodos pressed.

            Tony and Sam nod in unison. “It was us and us alone.”

            Kodos stares at them, then smiles. “Well! That settles _that._ O my children, you are free to go. Men, release them.”

            The soldiers step back. Jimmy is surprised—and suspicious. Are they really being let go? Recovering his wits, he starts to nudge the others out the door when Kodos turns to Sam and Tony and says, “As for you two…”

            Jimmy turns back just in time to see Kodos draw a broad, curved sword. With a quick thrust, he runs Sam through, the blade protruding from his back for an instant before Kodos pulls it out, then repeats the maneuver on Tony. Before Jimmy even has time to blink, they drop to their knees, then fall to the ground, eyes wide open as their blood stains the dirt.

            Kodos wipes his sword on Sam’s body, almost contemptuously, then returns it to its sheath. “I kept my word,” he says dispassionately. “I was merciful. They died swiftly.” He turns and walks out of the room.

            Jimmy is too numb to scream, too shocked to cry. He merely stays where he is, his face white, staring at his brother’s corpse, until the frightened sobs of the children draw him back to himself. He turns, puts his arms around the two littlest fighters, and leads the others out of the chamber.

* * *

            In theory, now that half the colony has been eliminated— _slaughtered—_ there is sufficient food to sustain everyone until the ship from Earth arrives. In practice, the soldiers take sadistic delight in withholding food from the children who participated in the Rebellion—Jimmy, the seven other kids who actively fought, and the others, the little ones who hid in the cave and the three who watched them. There aren’t a lot of adults who survived, and most of the ones who did are in Kodos’ army.

            Jimmy wonders, in a detached way, why Sam and Tony didn’t get _all_ the children out of the village. It isn’t until later that he finds out that the kids in the cave were mostly kids who were supposed to go to the meeting, whose parents smelled a rat and told them to run or hide. Tony and Sam and a few others who knew what was going on rounded them up and smuggled them out.

            It makes him feel even worse about failing Sara.

            So while everyone else in the village gets the proper amount of nutrition, Jimmy and the others, the ones he’s thinking of as _his kids_ since he’s one of the oldest ones to survive, are still on the short rations they were getting before the massacre—less. And Jimmy is eating even less, only once a day and half of what he technically is issued for that meal, because he divides what’s left of his food between as many of the kids as he can. He can’t help but remember giving Sara and Lissa his dinner the night before, and he takes a little bit of comfort in knowing that, at least, they had one last night with full bellies before they died.

            He won’t let anyone else die. Not if he can help it. He’ll starve to death first.

            He keeps a special eye on Kevin, the little boy he carried to the cave himself, but he really watches over all the little ones. They’re still living in the cave, not because they’re hiding but because it’s the only place they can all be together. The morning after their unsuccessful rebellion, Jimmy asks Tessa, who’s the oldest survivor at twelve, to stay in the cave and guard the little ones, and he finds out where everyone lives, and he takes the other children over the age of seven into the village. They go to the houses to get bags for the kids, bags of clothing, and it’s hard carrying seven bags at once, but Jimmy grits his teeth and does it, because it’s his fault these kids don’t have parents anymore, he’s the only survivor of the scouting party and he’s the only surviving leader and he failed them. He won’t fail them again.

            Tessa and Walton, who’s eleven, try to convince Jimmy that it’s not his fault, but he won’t listen. What do they know, after all, they were the ones who stayed back in the cave, they weren’t there, they didn’t see. So he continues to punish himself by giving away three-quarters of his food, by taking the longest shifts on watch, by sleeping in the hardest and coldest part of the cave.

            Except that part doesn’t really work. The little ones flock around him, clinging to him, and not just because he gives them extra food. They beg him to tell them stories. And he does—stories he remembers Sam telling him when he was little, Rudyard Kipling’s _Just So Stories_ and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales and Aesop’s fables. But there’s one story they ask for, again and again and again.

            “Tell us about the monster and the sun, Jimmy, please!”

            And Jimmy does, again and again and again, telling them the story he knows Sam made up as he went, the story about the princess that he knows is his favorite cousin and the monster that he knows in his heart of hearts is Nylund and the famine so like theirs. He doesn’t understand it any better than he did the first time he heard it, but he tells it anyway, and the kids like it, because they smile even though they’re all orphans and they sleep even though they’re hungry.

            And the next night, they ask him to tell it again.

            Five days after the massacre, Jimmy is nibbling halfheartedly at his breakfast and sitting outside of the cave when he sees oily black smoke rising on the horizon.

            “What is that?” Catheryn asks from behind him. She’s nine, too, but Jimmy will be ten in three months and she’s only been nine _for_ three months.

            “I don’t know,” Jimmy answers. “But I’m going to find out. You coming?”

            “I’m right behind you, Jimmy.”

            The two of them dart from cover to cover at first, but then they realize that nobody is paying attention, everybody is running _away_ from the smoke, so they look at each other and they come out in the open and they just walk towards the smoke, and nobody notices them. Jimmy is starting to feel invisible, and he’s also starting to feel like that maybe isn’t such a bad thing, because if you’re invisible nobody can hurt you.

            And then he sees where the smoke is coming from, and he stops dead, staring.

            It’s Kodos’ compound, his big fancy mansion where he lives and works.

            And it’s burning to the ground.

            “Did we do that?” Catheryn asks nervously.

            “I don’t think so,” Jimmy answers, but he’s mesmerized by the smoke. “Why’d they _do_ that?”

            “Who?”

            But Jimmy doesn’t know the answer to that, either. _Somebody_ burned down Kodos’ house. He doesn’t know who, but whoever it was, he finds himself wishing they’d done it a few days earlier.

            He wonders if Kodos is still inside it.

            “Catheryn,” he says, “go back to the cave, tell the others. I—” He stops, looking up at the sight of something descending through the atmosphere.

            “What?” Catheryn asks.

            Slowly, for the first time in almost a week, Jimmy smiles.

            “I think the Federation is here.”

* * *

            It’s not until the ship lands that it hits Jimmy.

            They told Kodos it would be four weeks before they arrived.

            And they’re here _now._

            That means there was plenty of food. That means that the famine wasn’t as bad as they thought. That means _nobody had to die._

            Kodos killed four thousand and thirty-two people for _no reason._

            Jimmy holds it together. He goes back to the cave and he gets the kids and they go back to the village together. They arrive and see a man in a shiny uniform talking to Nylund and a soldier. The children hang back, but Jimmy is past being afraid and he doesn’t even realize how badly he’s broken, so he just walks up to them.

            “My name is James T. Kirk,” he says in a clear, carrying voice. “My aunt and uncle are dead. So are my cousins. So’s my brother.” He points behind him. “All those children are orphans. And it’s all Kodos’ fault.”

            The man looks down at Jimmy, but he’s not dismissing him like the soldiers clearly want him to. Instead, he gets down on one knee so that he’s on eye level with Jimmy. “What happened?” he asks quietly. “We came as quickly as we could—was it the famine?”

            “Not exactly,” Jimmy says. “Kodos killed them. He killed them all.”

            The man stands up. “Is this true?”

            The soldier hesitates. At Jimmy’s shoulder, Catheryn speaks up. “It’s true. We tried to stop them from hurting anybody else and they killed our friends, too.”

            The man’s eyes darken, and he turns. “Lieutenant Nylund!”

            There’s a doctor there, too. He has medical equipment with him, but he takes one look at the children and then turns to the man in charge, who’s giving orders. “Captain, all of these children are malnourished. I’d wager it’s been a week since any of them got proper attention. And since they’re orphaned, they need to get off this planet, _now._ ”

            The man—the captain—nods. “This colony has failed,” he announces. “It’s over. Sergeant, get your men to bring all the survivors here. We’re taking you all back to Earth.”

            It probably should surprise Jimmy how many of the adults are reluctant to go back to Earth, but it doesn’t. The captain is shocked and appalled when he finds out how many orphans there are, nearly ninety percent of the survivors. They get everyone onto the starship—not shuttles, a real starship—and they start back to Earth.

            They try to make all the children talk to the therapist on the ship. Jimmy doesn’t want to talk. He bites the man when he puts his hand on his arm, just because he’s frustrated, and after that they leave him alone. He still won’t eat as much as he should and he won’t talk to anybody and he spends all of his time by himself.

            They’ve been in space for two weeks and Jimmy is sitting on the observation deck, curled up in a corner and watching the stars zip past and wishing he could be jettisoned like the trash, because he’s not worth anything. He never hears the footsteps behind him, not until a quiet voice says, “May I join you?”

            Jimmy starts and looks up to see a youngish man, with dark hair already starting to go thin on top, holding a tray. Jimmy shrugs, looking back out at the stars. “It’s your ship.”

            “Not really. I’m still a student.” The man sits down next to Jimmy. “They’re something else, aren’t they?”

            “I guess,” Jimmy says indifferently. Secretly, he’s really impressed. He loves the stars, but he can’t bring himself to say so.

            “I love them.” The man speaks quietly, almost reverently. “I can’t imagine not being in space. Starfleet was the best choice I ever made.”

            Jimmy wants to admit that he loves them, too, that maybe he’ll join Starfleet someday like his mom and dad, but what comes out is, “I’m not going to love anything ever again.”

            The man looks at Jimmy, then, and Jimmy sees that his eyes are full of tears. “Did ye lose someone down there?” he asks. He’s got a strange accent, one Jimmy can’t place.

            Jimmy nods, curling into himself. “Everyone,” he mumbles. “Kodos said my aunt and uncle and my three little cousins were _inferior,_ and he massacred them. And then he killed my big brother when we tried to avenge them.”

            “Is that why ye’re nae eatin’? Because ye’re mourning them? Or,” the man asks shrewdly, “is it because ye blame yersel’?”

            “It’s my fault,” Jimmy bursts out, looking up at the man. “I couldn’t save my family—I was there watching when Kodos ordered his soldiers to kill them and I couldn’t do anything to save them. I promised Sara I wouldn’t let them hurt her and they took her away from me anyway. And Sam—Sam wouldn’t even have _been_ there if it wasn’t for me. He ran away from home, and I got mad and stole my dad’s old car and drove it off a canyon and got hurt, and he came back to make sure I was okay and Frank sent _both_ of us to live with Uncle AJ and Aunt Theenie. If I hadn’t been such a screw-up, Sam wouldn’t have come back, and at least _he_ would have been safe. It’s my fault,” he says again.

            The man doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just looks at the tray in front of him, then picks up one of the two glasses and takes a long pull off of it.

            “Your brother loved you,” he says at last, setting the glass down. “He came back because he loved you, and he wanted to make sure you were safe. He didn’t _have_ to come back. Even if you’d been hurt, he didn’t _have_ to come back—he _chose_ to. So don’t blame yourself for that.” He’s got his accent under control, Jimmy notices, he’s talking more normally, just with the faintest hint of music to his voice. “And it’s not your fault, what happened to the others. Kodos ordered it and the soldiers did it, and all you could have done was died, too. Your brother and the others, they died to keep you safe, they died so you could live.” He points to the tray. “The least you can do is make their sacrifice worth something. If you let yourself starve to death, you’re as good as saying their lives were worthless.”

            Jimmy wants to get angry, but he can’t even summon up the emotions for that. Easier to just do what the man wants.

            So he eats, and he finishes everything the man brought him, but he doesn’t taste a bite.

            “There ye are, laddie,” the man says gently when Jimmy finishes. “I’ll leave ye be now. But if ye ever _do_ decide to make a career of space, look me up.” He stands up. “Because laddie? I’d follow ye anywhere.”

            He leaves, but he leaves Jimmy with a lot to think about.

* * *

            Jimmy doesn’t see the man again, but he does see the captain a couple of times. He tells the man more or less what happened, but leaves out one or two things. Like that he helped lead the Children’s Rebellion. Or that the guards ripped Sara out of his arms. Or that Nylund was the one who dragged his brother into the compound. He sees the captain and Nylund talking a lot, and he knows that Nylund works for Starfleet. Surely the man must have confessed long ago.

             Jimmy waits for the captain—whose name is Hackett, he learns—to ask him about Nylund, but he never does. So Jimmy concludes that Starfleet must condone what Nylund—and Kodos—did. He decides then and there that, as tempting as it is, he’ll never join Starfleet. Why would he want to join an organization that let his family be slaughtered and didn’t even care?

            Then again, Jimmy’s getting good at acting like he doesn’t care either. He’s locked all his emotions deep down and just goes through the day woodenly. Whatever he really feels, he’s not letting it out. He avoids Kevin, the little boy he saved; he avoids Catheryn and Tessa and Walton and the others, because caring is a weakness and loving just leads to pain. People who care about you go away, so Jimmy decides it’s better to be the one doing the leaving than the one being left.

            The ship, which is called the _Lexington_ _,_ returns to Earth four weeks after leaving Tarsus IV. Jimmy learns, from eavesdropping on a couple of crewmen who don’t realize he’s listening, that the _Lexington_ was on a routine mission a week away from Tarsus, but that Starfleet didn’t want them to break off their exploration for relief work, they were planning to send a ship from Earth with the “proper” supplies. But Captain Hackett, who Jimmy realizes is genuinely a good man, decided that helping the colonists was more important than whatever they were supposed to be doing.

            Jimmy _does not like Hackett,_ he tells himself firmly as he watches the docking procedure. He doesn’t like him and he doesn’t like the man who made him start eating again. He doesn’t _dislike_ them, either, but he can’t let himself like them, because they’ll just let him down like everyone else does. But deep down, he wishes they wouldn’t.

            He joins the other colonists, all three thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight, as they prepare to get off. Jimmy hasn’t counted, of course, he’s been avoiding them, but he knows that’s how many survived because Kodos said so. There were eight thousand and two people on Tarsus IV, counting Jimmy and Sam. Four thousand and one of them died in the massacre. Thirty kids died fighting the soldiers, and then Sam and Tony died after. And Kodos died. And Jimmy knows that he killed the soldier, the one he hit in the throat with the rock, but he doesn’t feel satisfied like he knows he should for avenging Sara’s death, he just feels dirty and guilty and sad.

            But the colonists all stand together, the few families that survived and the orphans, so many orphans, and they’re ready to get off this ship and back to Earth to try and find any family they might have left. But before they can get off, a man comes and stands in front of them on a box, with a microphone.

            “My name is Admiral Alexander Marcus,” he says, and he looks like he’s middle-aged, older than Captain Hackett but not too old. “I’m representing Starfleet, and the Federation. We are…deeply saddened at what happened on Tarsus IV. We understand that you don’t want to be forced to go over what happened there over and over again.”

            The crowd stirs and mutters, generally agreeing. Admiral Marcus continues, “The Tarsus project is closed. All records on it are being sealed, and it will never be referred to again, by anyone in Starfleet or the Federation. We—ah—we ask that you not discuss it, either. Except, of course, with one another,” he adds hastily, “and with your direct blood relatives—parents, children, siblings, that sort of thing, but only if you absolutely have no other choice. And—ah—there are designated therapists Starfleet will provide, free of charge, to help you deal with the…experience. We ask that you not discuss Tarsus with any other therapist.”

            Jimmy tenses. He doesn’t want to be _forced_ to talk about Tarsus, but he doesn’t want to be told he _can’t_ if he _wants_ to. But everyone else agrees. He figures the kids aren’t going to want to talk about it, some of the littlest ones might not even _remember,_ and the adults are ashamed to admit their parts in it.

            Only Jimmy seems to have a problem with it, but he’s outnumbered, and anyway he’s not going to talk to this man, not if he can help it.

            He stays silent as the crowd begins to debark. There are hundreds, thousands, of people waiting, and Jimmy hears cries of “Auntie!” or “Grandpa!” from the children and adults calling names, sees the children scooped up and taken away, and he doesn’t push into the crowd, because probably nobody’s bothered to come get him, so he’ll have to get home on his own, and he has no idea how far from Riverside they are, but he almost doesn’t care.

            And then, all of a sudden, he hears a voice, a frantic but familiar voice, somewhere up ahead of him. “Captain Hackett, I’m Commander Kirk, I got a message that—”

            “Right over here, Commander,” Hackett says.

            Suddenly, there she is, right in front of Jimmy. His mother, Commander Winona Barrett Kirk, her face pale, her blue eyes wide, and he notes in a detached manner that her shirt is buttoned all wrong. “Jimmy,” she breathes.

            “Mom,” Jimmy says, dispassionately, blankly.

            His mother stares at him, then looks around. “Where’s Sam?”

            Something deep inside Jimmy twists into a hard knot. His mother doesn’t even care about him, she doesn’t ask how he is or what happened, she looks right at him and her first question is _where’s Sam,_ he always knew she loved Sam best.

            “Commander Kirk,” Hackett says softly. “Jimmy told me—and his friends have confirmed it—that he was the only member of his family to survive. I’m so sorry.”

            His mother returns her eyes to Jimmy. He looks back at her, too numb to be angry, too angry to be sad. He’s just blank. She swallows hard, and says in a shaky voice, “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s—let’s go.”

            She takes his hand and he lets her, and they walk away through the crowd that’s mostly thinning. Jimmy looks back over his shoulder at the ship to see Hackett standing in the doorway watching. Just then, the other man, the one who talked to him on the Observation Deck, comes out and scans the crowd. His eyes lock with Jimmy’s, and even from a distance Jimmy can see that the man is crying, but he raises his right hand in a salute.

            And something inside Jimmy starts to break free.

            He doesn’t say anything until they get off the shuttle back in Riverside and get in the hovercar and go back to the farm. They’re starting to walk up the steps when Jimmy stops dead, digging in his heels. “I can’t go in there.”

            His mother looks back at him. “It’s the house, Jimmy. You’ve come in here hundreds of times.”

            Jimmy shakes his head. “ _He_ said I wasn’t allowed back in, ever. He said he’d kill me if I ever darkened his door again.” The venom he puts on _he_ makes it clear that he’s talking about Frank, his stepfather.

            His mother turns from the door, walks over, and kneels down in front of Jimmy. “It’s not _his_ door,” she says quietly. “He won’t ever hurt you again, Jimmy. He’s gone.”

            “Gone?” Jimmy repeats.

            “As soon as I got the news about what happened—that they were bringing the survivors back—” his mother swallows—“I commed Frank. I guess I caught him off-guard, because he was drunk at the time, and he made a few…unguarded statements that clued me in to what’s been going on around here while I’ve been gone. I told him to get the hell out of my house. He’s gone, Jimmy, and he’s not coming back, and I am so, so sorry for what I’ve put you through.”

            Jimmy doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say he forgives her, because he can’t, because if she hadn’t married Frank and left him in charge of Jimmy and Sam then they never would have gone to Tarsus IV and Sam wouldn’t be dead right now. But he nods, and he follows his mother into the house.

            She makes dinner. Jimmy hasn’t had a home-cooked meal since before the plague hit the harvest, and it actually tastes good, but he feels guilty about it tasting good because Sam isn’t here to enjoy it. Still, he eats every bite, remembering what the man on the _Lexington_ said.

            “You could use a bath,” his mother says, picking up the dishes. “Go ahead and start running the water. I’ll be up to help you in a few minutes.”

            Jimmy doesn’t bother pointing out that he’s been taking baths on his own since he was three years old. He just nods and goes upstairs to start drawing the bath.

            He makes the water hot, as hot as he can make it, and he slides into the tub and it burns and bites at his skin, but he doesn’t care because it’s going to burn Tarsus off of him, burn off the taint of starvation and the stains of blood, of Sara’s blood and Reba’s, of Uncle AJ’s and Aunt Theenie’s and Lissa’s, of the soldier he killed, and of Sam, Sam who died in his place…

            He grabs the loofah and _scrubs_ at his skin, as hard as he can, and soon his skin is bright red, but still he can’t rid himself of the prickling of the dust, the feel of the soldiers’ hands, and the smell, the smell of blood and death…

            “Jimmy?”

            His mother comes in, takes in his appearance, and plunges her arm into the bathtub. She gasps at the water temperature, then pulls the plug and pulls Jimmy to his feet and turns on the shower, turns it on cold at first, and the cold takes away the pain and that’s not what he wants, not what he _deserves._ And then she adds a little hot water and the shower becomes soothing, and she takes the loofah and looks at it and puts it away and uses a washcloth instead. She washes his body and then his hair and he lets her, and then she turns off the water and pulls him out and dries him off.

            She’s brought some clean clothes for him, God alone knows where she got them, and Jimmy puts them on obediently. It’s while he’s pulling up his pants that his mother stops him and touches his back. “Where did you get these?” she whispers.

            Jimmy doesn’t turn to look at her and he doesn’t have to ask what she means. “Frank, mostly. Except the one on my left shoulder blade. That’s from one of the soldiers. I tried to steal some extra food for the kids.” He speaks in a flat voice, like he doesn’t care, but the thing inside him that’s started to break is shivering now.

            His mother runs her fingers over the scars, not just the new one, but all of them. “I never knew—” she begins, and then she breaks down, she’s _sobbing,_ Jimmy turns around to see her kneeling on the bathroom floor with her hands over her face, saying over and over again, “I never knew, oh, God, how could I not have known, how could I have let him—oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Jimmy, please, can you _ever_ forgive me?”

            Jimmy doesn’t know what to say. His mother looks up at him and she touches his cheek. Her voice is barely audible as she whispers, “How could I have let him take you away? Of course you’ll never forgive me. I’ll never forgive myself. Oh, baby, I almost lost you.”

            And that thing deep down in Jimmy breaks all the way, and he finds himself crying, sobbing for the first time since Sara’s death. He flings himself at his mother and throws his arms around her neck and buries his face in her shoulder, and he tells her everything, not all the details, not about the story or his promises to Sara, and he doesn’t forget his last promise to Sam, he doesn’t tell her that he helped lead the rebellion. But he sobs out the rest of it, how the guards took Sara away from him, how he couldn’t save any of them, the rebellion and Sam’s death, and she begs him for forgiveness and he forgives her, because it’s not her fault, of course it’s not her fault, it’s all his fault, but he doesn’t say that, he just says that he forgives her and he loves her, and she says she loves him, too.

            At last the tears are all gone. His mother picks Jimmy up like he weighs nothing and carries him to his room— _his_ bedroom, with all the things he didn’t take to Tarsus IV with him still in their places—and she sits down on his bed and she holds him, and he curls up on her lap like he’s a little boy again.

            “Mommy,” he whimpers, gripping her shirt tightly, and it doesn’t matter that he’s almost ten and big boys don’t call their mothers _mommy,_ it only matters that he’s more scared than he’s been since he had chicken pox four years ago and he’s missed her.

            His mother holds him tightly, resting her cheek on the top of his head. “My little lion,” she whispers.

            Jimmy knows that lions are supposed to be brave, but he doesn’t feel very brave. He remembers a line from a book his mother read him once, something about how true courage is in facing danger even when you feel afraid.

            “I wish I had the sort of courage that makes one forget he is afraid,” he mumbles into his mother’s shoulder.

            His mother looks down at him. “Stay here.”

            Jimmy looks up anxiously, not wanting to admit how badly he doesn’t want her to leave, and he can’t hold back a whimper of fear when she walks out of the room. But she comes back in a minute, holding a PADD and smiling slightly, although her eyes are still sad.

            “I found it,” she says, getting back into Jimmy’s bed. He crawls straight back into her lap. “Come here.” She turns the PADD on, and Jimmy leans back against her as she begins, “ _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,_ by L. Frank Baum. Chapter One: The Cyclone.”

            A storm starts up outside, an early snowstorm and a nasty one, but Jimmy and his mother ignore it, caught up in the world of the Wizard and the plight of the little girl, Dorothy. His mother remembers all the voices just the way she read them to him before, and she runs her fingers through his hair as she reads, and he knows that both of them are starting to feel better.

            They’re on the last page, and Dorothy is running towards Aunt Em, when his mother suddenly stops reading and breaks down crying again. Jimmy panics, wondering what he’s done wrong, what happened. “Mommy?” he says, his voice high-pitched with fear. “Mommy, what is it?”

            His mother drops the PADD and pulls Jimmy into a tight hug, burying her face in the top of his head. “‘My darling child,’” she whispers.

            Jimmy remembers the line. He starts crying again, too, and he clutches her arm tightly as it crosses his chest, as he sobs out the last line of the book: “‘I’m so glad to be at home again!’”


End file.
